A Good Day of Sewing

Good morning, my friends. It was nice to have a day mostly devoted to sewing yesterday. There was progress on several fronts. For one thing, I finished up the 12th of 12 blocks for A Year in the Garden.

Here are all the blocks I have for this quilt.

When I made my way to the sewing room later in the day, I matched it up with these fabrics from my stash. I have in mind to use the bright floral for the border and sashings. I'll use the yellow for cornerstones. If there's enough fabric, I might decide to add a border around each block. Possibly, I'll add in a green as well.

My next stop was to check on the garden. I harvested two more pickling cucumbers, four regular-sized zucchinis and 7 babies. There's a recipe I like that uses the babies. I'll say more about that when I get ready to make it. For now...feast your eyes on our overabundance of cherry tomatoes.

You might remember when I was whining about how there were no tomatoes on this large plant. Since then, the plant has grown to gargantuan proportions, and it is covered in tomatoes. I've dusted off my recipes that use cherry tomatoes, and those will be on next week's menu.

This cluster of zinnias continues to delight me. It seems each time I see it, it has added another new color.

And I love how these are sort of a flower within a flower.

This is another sunflower from the package labeled "Infrared Mix." It has produced all different colors, with the red center common to all of them.

This one is called Sunburst Panache. It's one of the taller ones.

And the giants are starting to open. I'm hoping they'll be fully open when I check on them today.

Back inside, I went to work on the quilting for the Girls' Getaway project. I finished filling in the background on the bicycle block.

And then I quilted the tent block in much the same way. Some of the embroidery was outlined, and then I filled in the background with a meandering feather.

Here's a peek at the back.

From there, I really wanted to give the Lemurs plenty of time, and so I stopped. I left it needle down at the 9-patch. Today I'll stitch this with some terry twists, and then move on to the embroidered bathtub block to its right.

As for the Lemurs, I have just two colors left to stitch...the darker tan and the white. I'm hoping to finish the thread painting today.

When I stopped for the day, I had the machine threaded with the darker tan thread, and I left it needle down.

There are just a few things on today's agenda...the usual garden check-in and a couple of easy household chores. We'll need to do our grocery shopping tomorrow, and so I'll need to finalize our menu for next week and make up a grocery list. Next week's menu will feature lots of zucchini and lots of cherry tomatoes. Mainly, it'll be another sewing day. Happily, we have leftovers for tonight's dinner.

Okay then. Sewing ahead. I'm hoping to have the Lemurs finished and ready for quilting by day's end.